This doesn't look like the PCT! It isn't. We decided to take a couple of weeks off and go where we knew there would be no snow. There is a lovely stretch of wild coast in Northern California called the Lost Coast. We hiked in on the 4th of July weekend. At the start of the hike, we went to the rim and saw beautiful flowers and lovely forests. Then we dropped down to the ocean in time to see our first forest fire of the year.
The fire:
Note the burning log that Jay is looking at:
We were trapped, because the tide was coming in (making the coast impassable at high tide). As Jay put it, "It's either drown or burn." We chose burn and hiked through the fire along with some other hikers. Then we got to the end to see the fire truck and teams of fire fighters (plus two helicopters dropping water, taken from the ocean). Jay and Kevin walked up to the fire fighting team. Kevin tried to engage them in a conversation about fire fighting -- prompted by "Jay here wants to become a forest fire fighter." Little did they know that they were all prisoners brought in for this. Ooops. From here, we hiked further down shore and met a ranger and then chose a camp site.
Jay and Kevin went on a day hike to the end of the coast the next day -- running into numerous hikers. Jay startled a nesting pelican. Then we hiked out the next day and saw tons of sea lions and seals as we stayed on the coast itself. -- beautiful.
An abandoned light house on the coast:
After coming out of the Lost Coast we headed for Redwoods.
We did a short (three day) backpack into Humboldt State Park -- one of the larger old and second growth forests.
Vicky admiring redwood hugeness. Darn tree hugger
The view lying down and looking up from where we placed our tent the second night we camped:
After the Redwoods we tried to do another trip on the PCT. The Trinity and Marble mountains on either side of the darling town of Etna. We met marmot and Roo at the brew pub. They told us that some of the trail had no snow on it but that most was very hard. Then we ran into the Three Bears who had gone in from Etna and encountered too much snow. So we trail angeled and drove the three bears to Seaid Valley. When we got there, a lightbulb went off in kevin's head -- let's do a hike southbound from Seaid into the Marble Mountains and see how far we can get on the PCT. We hiked for four days and the headed back to Truckee. We went to the REI in Reno from Truckee and ran into Balls, Sunshine, and the Mad Hatter. Today we head to Reno, then Lone Pine on a bus and finally start our Sierra trip.
--the Slackin Mattsons, Momma Moab, Jayhawk, and Martin Eden
